Lehman Brothers Bankrupt, Merril Lynch folds - Go Bush!

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Unarmed Gunman

Unarmed Gunman

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I love the job this administration has done. Lehman Brothers and their 150 year history couldn't survive, Merril Lynch jumped into Bank of Americ'a arms, AIG (the 7th largest company in the world) is knocking at the door of the government (ahem, taxpayers I mean) for a $40 Billion bailout to stay afloat because they saw it worked for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all this on Monday.

Things are going great.

Somebody, anybody - please help me understand how you can want another Republican administration.

Don't tell me about raising taxes - Infaltion is a tax. The rising price of gas is a tax. Alot of you don't seem to realize this. You bristle at the thought of Obama (who may, or may not be worth a fuck, but at this point I think we need to find out) because you think he'll raise taxes.

Let's look at this from a basic economic view. Any increase in your cost of living that is not offset by rising wages has a net negative overall effect.

Rising fuel prices is a tax.
Corporate bailouts (Fannie Mae, Freddi Mac, AIG, etc) is a tax.

Just because you don't see it on your check stub doesn't mean it's not a tax. Inflation is a tax. Listen to Ron Paul, because he can explain it better than I, but it's the truth. And the only way we can fund a continuation of the war, and more corporate bailouts, etc. is thorugh inflation. This misperception that the Republicans don't tax as much as Democrats is frustratingly mainstream, and therefore hard to explain.

Both parties tax, but the Republicans are smarter about how they do it - because they use financial markets and inflation to tax, whereas Democrats go right after your wages.

I don't expect anyone to change their political beliefs, but at least understand the economics behind it.
 


Rebuttal on why this is actually the Democrats fault and Bush is doing a great job by popeye or zeros in 3...2...1...lol
 
powell1 said:
I fail to see how the Bush administration directly caused this. Care to explain?
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Because anything bad that happens during an administration is directly their fault. Just like 9/11. And Katrina. And the 3rd Star Wars prequel.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
Iraq.
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retardedhi1.jpg
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
Take a government class and learn about veto power, then come back.

You won't sound so stupid.
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If the Democrats you rely on so much were as good as they said, they would have gathered the majority needed and overturned any veto Bush issued. They did not. Presidential vetoes have been overturned many times, including times when the majority needed wasn't fully composed of the President's political party. No one in the Democratic party was able to achieve this.

So if you want to point a finger point it to everyone.

As for me, I blame Obama.

"I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich. I'm a Republican because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me."
 
invisible777 said:
If the Democrats you rely on so much were as good as they said, they would have gathered the majority needed and overturned any veto Bush issued. They did not. Presidential vetoes have been overturned many times, including times when the majority needed wasn't fully composed of the President's political party. No one in the Democratic party was able to achieve this.
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All this tells me is that Republicans fold to whatever their party wants them to do, while Democrats will at least stand for what they originally believed in.

So if you want to point a finger point it to everyone.
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I do whole heartily agree with you on that. If anything we should be blaming ourselves for a shit economy, we did vote these people into power after all.
 
transistor said:
it's the federal reserve's fault, actually
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Alot of it. But not all of it. The Federal Reserve didn't march into Iraq.

There is plenty of blame to go around. But the Republican administration deserves a large portion of it. Why anybody in this country wouldn't want a change - any change, is hard for me to understand.

Remember the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
The Federal Reserve didn't march into Iraq.
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If we could have only known that a march into Iraq would cause an excess of cheap, available cash to lend, lowered borrower standards by lenders, borrower ignorance, creation of exotic loans, falsifying borrower papers so they qualify for loans above what they should, unethical mortgage brokers, repackaging of loans into different debt instruments that were not properly rated, and investor excitement and greed from the returns they were seeing, etc. Then this whole thing could have been stopped.

Damn you George Bush. Damn you.
 
powell1 said:
If we could have only known that a march into Iraq would cause an excess of cheap, available cash to lend, lowered borrower standards by lenders, borrower ignorance, creation of exotic loans, falsifying borrower papers so they qualify for loans above what they should, unethical mortgage brokers, repackaging of loans into different debt instruments that were not properly rated, and investor excitement and greed from the returns they were seeing, etc. Then this whole thing could have been stopped.

Damn you George Bush. Damn you.
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Agreed! But these companies know that the Bush administration is in favor of corporate welfare and corporate bailouts. So they can make horrible business decisions, because if (and when) they fail the government will bail them out with our tax money.

You can look at the above examples if you don't understand the connection.
 
powell1 said:
If we could have only known that a march into Iraq would cause an excess of cheap, available cash to lend, lowered borrower standards by lenders, borrower ignorance, creation of exotic loans, falsifying borrower papers so they qualify for loans above what they should, unethical mortgage brokers, repackaging of loans into different debt instruments that were not properly rated, and investor excitement and greed from the returns they were seeing, etc. Then this whole thing could have been stopped.

Damn you George Bush. Damn you.
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This is correct, the Bush administration should have seen it coming. You don't just see a country's financial infrastructure collapse at such a rapid rate without indicators slapping you in the face - and then when it starts collapsing continue to let it collapse. Believe me, I'm damn well sure he knew it was coming, it's not like people don't watch the economy after all so don't say it isn't Bush's fault.

However this is probably just as much or more the Federal Reserves fault. They have done this in the past, and they'll continue to do it. They have the power to do such a thing, because they really run the country after all, so in that respect it's not totally Bush's fault.

Having a private, unregulated company, issuing, retracting, printing, and changing our money has no place in any country - period.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
Agreed! But these companies know that the Bush administration is in favor of corporate welfare and corporate bailouts. So they can make horrible business decisions, because if (and when) they fail the government will bail them out with our tax money.

You can look at the above examples if you don't understand the connection.
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I understand just fine. See, you are kinda like this kid I knew in math class. He'd work his ass off on a big problem, thinking about it for hours, factoring this, simplifying that, yadda yadda yadda. Problem is, he always got the answer wrong. His logic was just fucked up. That's just the way it is. When the processor is fucked up, the equation isn't going to compute correctly.

Since you seem to have a bit of a boner for Barack, how exactly do you think he would have handled the situation? What should have been done? Should we have let BS go under? I'm not entirely criticizing you, I just don't think you understand the complexity of the financial markets (and truly, either do I past a certain point). There could have been a lot of repricussions to that course though:

• The financial markets would have seized.
• Your bank would have closed its doors.
• The FDIC would not have the capital to cover all the assets in a nationwide bank run.
• The government would have instituted capital controls.
• Gold would have raced to $2,000 per ounce…but you would not be able to buy or sell it, since market trading would have been suspended.
• The government would have no choice but to turn on the printing presses to unprecedented levels causing a massive devaluation in the U.S. dollar. In turn, this would have led to a total collapse of emerging markets and the currencies of those countries.
• Even developed markets like the G7 would have also seen a collapse in their markets and currencies.
• Your house would be worthless, your business would be worthless, and your assets would be frozen and devalued every hour.
(source, take it for what it's worth)

This is starting to stray a little from the original post, but I'm just trying to get a handle on how you are getting from point A to point B in your head.
 
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